


walk away (don't slam the door)

by madameofmusic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 00:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/pseuds/madameofmusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheriff John Stilinski dies on a Tuesday. </p><p>Stiles realises three things:</p><p>One, the stark white walls of the hospice ward in Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital hadn’t been changed in the slightest since Stiles’s mom died, twelve years earlier. Even the painting of the ship in the hallway, across from the nurse’s station, still hung there, slightly lopsided and somewhat dusty. </p><p>Two, his father looked much more peaceful in death than he had since Stiles turned sixteen and Scott turned into a werewolf. The wrinkles that had seemed permanently creased into his skin, the bags under his eyes, the firm, straight line of his lips all had relaxed the moment the Sheriff’s heart had stopped, and hadn’t restarted again. </p><p>Three, he needed to break up with Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	walk away (don't slam the door)

Sheriff John Stilinski dies on a Tuesday.

Stiles realises three things:

One, the stark white walls of the hospice ward in Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital hadn’t been changed in the slightest since Stiles’s mom died, twelve years earlier. Even the painting of the ship in the hallway, across from the nurse’s station, still hung there, slightly lopsided and somewhat dusty.

Two, his father looked much more peaceful in death than he had since Stiles turned sixteen and Scott turned into a werewolf. The wrinkles that had seemed permanently creased into his skin, the bags under his eyes, the firm, straight line of his lips all had relaxed the moment the Sheriff’s heart had stopped, and hadn’t restarted again.

Three, he needed to break up with Derek.

The last one wasn’t so much a realisation as it was a split second decision, made when he looked over to the chair on his left a nurse had shoved him into as the sheriff’s room flooded with doctors and nurses and medical technicians, the chair that was empty and should have been filled with two hundred pounds of werewolf, should have been filled with Derek who promised he’d only be gone an hour at most, only needed to check up on work and hadn’t been back for three hours, thirty six minutes.

He does it in a text message, because he knows his voice will betray him with a call, knows that Derek will try to convince him if he does.

It’s simple, four sentences, written as he walks out the doors of the hospital, and into his jeep.

My dad is dead. I’m breaking up with you. I’ll get my stuff tomorrow, and leave the key on the counter. Please don’t be there.

Then, he shuts his phone off, and tosses it into the backseat.

He drives away.

(There are two messages, later on his phone, that he deleted without looking at them, from Derek.

One, with a timestamp of three hours and thirty-eight minutes after he had left that morning.

Where are you going? The nurse said you just left.

One three hours and forty six minutes after he had left that morning.  
Okay.

Derek lets him go.)

 

  
The next time Stiles sees Derek is at his dad’s funeral, a week later. He catches his eye as he stands to do his eulogy, shakes his way through the speech Scott had helped him write, and then steps off the altar and sits down in his front pew once more. A few people make speeches after him, and then more, until Stiles has been sitting in the wooden pew so long his legs have gone numb and the sick feeling of nausea dries up and leaves the ache of emptiness that had been his companion since he got the call at work a few weeks ago, you’re dad has had another heart attack. They’re taking him to the hospital, since they moved him to hospice because he hadn’t woken up in a week and this was his third one since Stiles had graduated high school.

The funeral ends.

He slips away, away from the well-wishers and sobbing old women, from people trying to make his sadness their own and into the bathroom of the quiet church. He locks the door, and curls up on the floor, presses his face into his hands and lets out a shaky breath.

He can hear the atrium from here, the quiet murmur of voices and the old, out-of-tune piano playing a quiet march.

His dad wanted to be cremated, and Stiles was taking his ashes later, to the grave next to his mom’s.

He waits, until the murmur of voices dies out, until he can no longer hear the piano, and then he stands.

He stands, dusts himself off, straightens his suit, unlocks the door, and runs into Derek.

Derek, who gives a concerned look, and starts to open his mouth. Stiles shakes his head, and walks past him, to the door and out to his car.

Derek lets him go.

 

  
The second time he sees Derek after his dad dies is at the supermarket. He’s picking up groceries for Mrs. McCall, busy as she is, and doesn’t realise it’s Derek until after he’s asked him to move, until he’s turning around in front of the wall of refrigerators, a carton of eggs in one hand, shopping cart in the other, and a look of befuddled remorse on his face.

“Stiles-”

“Can you move, please?” He gestures to the eggs behind Derek, and frowns.

Derek moves, pushing the old, rickety shopping cart out of Stiles’s way. “Stiles, I’m-”

Stiles grabs the first carton he sees, sets them in the cart, and brushes past Derek, body a line of nonchalance as he wheels it away.

Derek lets him go.

He crumples the list in his hand as soon as he’s out of Derek’s line of sight, checks out, pays, and leaves.

He sits in the parking lot for twenty minutes, knuckles white on the steering wheel as he grips it on either side of his head, pressed against the ridged wheel as he breathes, slow and steady. Eight seconds in, held for four seconds, out in two, like Derek had taught him, from when he would wake up in a panic, in New York, alone, family burnt alive two thousand, eight hundred miles away.

He brings the groceries over to Mrs. McCall, leaves them on the counter.

She doesn’t comment, later, when she opens the carton of eggs to find every one dripping, crushed in their holders.

 

  
The first day it snows, twelve weeks after his dad’s death, seven weeks since he’d seen Derek, he remembers where he left his hoodie.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal to go without it, it wasn’t that cold and he owned others, except the year he went off to college, way up north in Washington State, his dad had pressed it into his hands.

“It’s cold up there.” “Your old one is ratty.” “Just take it, Stiles.”

It hadn’t been a big deal, up to that point, he hadn’t needed it and was making a college try at not thinking about his dad, laying in the hospital bed with the white sheets piled up under his chest, except-  
Except, that morning, he had rolled over, and seen the white layer from his window, and his stomach had turned, remembering the times he and his dad had made snowmen, and come in to find his mom, two cups of hot cocoa in her hands and a smile on her face, with love for “her boys.”

He searched high and low, digging through his closet, his dresser, the laundry for his hoodie, the one with the synthetic fur on the inside and purple cotton on the outside.

It struck him where it was as soon as his eyes landed on the keychain Derek had given him on their third date, that he still hadn’t taken his keys off.

(Officially, he had nothing else to put his keys on.

Unofficially, his hands shook the one time he tried, and he ended up breaking a nail and making his finger bleed as he tried to separate the key ring enough to pull the key out.)

He stands from where he had been digging through the laundry basket, grabs his keys, slips on his shoes, and drives.

He pulls up in front of the house Derek had bought, not even six months ago, the one he had moved into, then moved out of.

He walks to the front door. He lifts his hand to knock, lets it hang there, then drops it. He’s halfway back to his car when he hears Derek’s voice.

“Stiles.”

He turns, and lifts a hand, a weak greeting. “Derek.”

“What are you-” Derek starts, and frowns when he sees Stiles skin has turned an angry red from the cold, the lack of heat in his jeep and his thin, short sleeved pajama top not helping in the slightest. “Come in. You’re going to freeze to death.”

“I’m not as weak as you think I am.” Stiles says, an old, automatic response to whenever Derek would begin to fret, begin to treat him like a porcelain doll for being disastrously human.

Derek’s lips lift in a half smile, and he moves aside as Stiles reluctantly trudges in the house.

They stand in the entryway, Stiles with his hands shoved in his pockets, Derek with his wrapped around a coffee mug, fingers tapping out a dull rhythm.

“Stiles-”

“Have you seen my hoodie?” Stiles cuts him off, doesn’t have it in himself to let Derek say what he wants. “The purple one, with the fur.”

Derek frowns, looks down into his mug. Looks back at Stiles, looks up the stairs, and shakes his head. “No.”

Stiles nods, once. “Thanks anyway.”

Derek starts again, but Stiles is already out the door, the wood shutting firmly behind him.

 

  
Two days later, Derek shows up at his house. Stiles still recognises the sound of his engine, leans up and looks out his window. His eyes follow Derek as he walks up the steps. Hesistates. Knocks.

Derek knocks once, twice, three times. He stands, rocking on his heels, waiting for Stiles. He glances towards Stiles’s window, sees Stiles sitting there. Stiles moves away from the window, ignores when Derek knocks again.

Derek leaves.

Stiles walks down the steps, and looks outside. He opens the door, grabs the purple hoodie from the steps and pulls it towards him.

On top, safety pinned to the fabric, is a note, scrawled in Derek’s achingly, still familiar handwriting.

I’m sorry.

Stiles throws it away, puts the hoodie in his closet, and leaves it there through the winter.

 

  
They see each other around town, but Derek seems to get it now, seems to understand Stiles wants to be left alone. Stiles feels Derek’s eyes watching him as he sits in a coffee shop with Scott, Allison, Lydia, knows that Derek sees he’s no longer the most talkative, sees that he doesn’t talk very much at all.

Scott’s stopped trying to get him to talk about it. Allison accepted Stiles’s newfound silence in the wake of his remaining parent’s death, just as he accepted her anger, her fury, after her mom’s. Lydia casts him worried glances when she thinks he’s not looking, but doesn’t say anything otherwise.

On the anniversary of Stiles’s dad’s death, he wakes. He dresses in his nicest clothing, he picks up flowers from the florist down the street from the station. He drives to the graveyard, parks.

He sets one flower on his mom’s grave, a pink carnation. her favourite, and another on his dad’s, a white cypress flower, and kneels.

He has cried exactly three times since his mom died. Once, when he looked over from the cartoon she had put on in her hospital room to find her no longer breathing. Another, when Scott had almost been killed by a rogue hunter as was bleeding out on the floor of an empty warehouse. And a third, today, as he bends over and clutches handfuls of grass.

The tears drip down his face, from his chin, onto the starched white collar of his shirt, soaking the black fabric of his tie. He’s quiet, soft noises escaping every once in awhile as he sits there, bent over his dad’s grave.

This is how Derek finds him.

He sees him, out of the corner of his eye, notices the shiny, black boots before he registers anything else.

This is what he does:

He stands up. He wipes his face. He straightens his jacket.

He walks over to Derek.

He considers him for a moment.

Then, he reels back and punches him in the face.

Derek takes it, stumbling back and pressing a palm to his nose. It’s unbroken by the time he pulls his hand away and stands upright once more.

Then:

“You weren’t there.” Stiles says, pocketing his hands. “You weren’t there. What makes you think you can be here now?” His voice only sounds tired, worn after all the days of thinking about how Derek had promised a lot of things, and the one time it had mattered had broken it.

Derek frowns, steps forward. “I was there. I came back. You were gone.”  
Stiles lets out a laugh, broken and ugly sounding. “I wasn’t the one gone, Derek.” Then: “My dad died, Derek, and you were at the fucking garage, working!”

Derek doesn’t say anything, but frowns more.

Stiles shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? My dad is dead, and you were gone.” Stiles balls his fists in his pockets, feels the nausea that accompanies anger build in the back of his throat. “What are you doing here, Derek?”

“Paying my respects.”

Stiles snorts, says. “You don’t deserve that.” Though he knows the sheriff loved Derek like a second son, would have forgiven him for not being there in a heartbeat if he were alive.

In that sense, Stiles and his dad are nothing alike.

“I know.” Derek says, and shuffles awkwardly, avoiding Stiles’s glare.

“Whatever.” Stiles says, finally. “I’m leaving.”

Derek lets him go.

 

  
He’s at the sheriff’s house (Stiles’s house, but he can’t think of it like that, not yet), leaning against his car. Stiles doesn’t know how long he’s been there, had been driving for hours at that point.

Stiles gets out of his jeep, wand walks to the door. Derek follows.

He stops, key in the lock, and turns. “Why are you here?”

Derek holds up the bag. “I brought food.” He says.

Stiles looks at the bag, and then back to Derek. “That’s not an answer.”

Derek lowers the bag. “We should talk. I want to talk, talk to you.”

Stiles sighs, turns back to the door, and lets him in. He hangs his suit jacket on the coat rack, toes off his shoes, and pads into the kitchen. Derek sits across from him at the table, opens the bag and slides Stiles a burges, some curly fries, and a drink.

Stiles accepts it, without a word, and tears open the packaging of the burger. He takes a bite, and then looks up at Derek, who had began to eat his own food.

“You remembered my order.”

Derek shrugs. “Of course.”

Stiles nods, and starts eating once more.

The finish, and sit in silence, before Derek clears his throat.

“I’m sorry.”

Stiles looks up from where he had been playing with the straw of his empty drink, fingers curling it around and bending it.

“I’m sorry.” He repeats, sitting up and looking Stiles right in the eye. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I left.” He offers Stiles his wrist. “Check my pulse. I’m not lying. I’m sorry.”

Stiles shakes his head, pushed Derek’s hand away. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, dammit!” Derek stands, voice raised. He looks agitated, brows furrowed. “It’s not fine! I left you! I should have been there!” He yells, hands clenched into fists on the table, hiding what Stiles knows now to be his claws that come out when he’s beyond angry at himself, the only thing he can’t control.

Stiles snorts, says. “Calm down. You’ll give yourself a heart attack, getting that angry.” He stops, seems to realise what he just said.

He stands, and mechanically walks towards the bathroom. He throws up all of what he just ate, and leans against the wall.

He hears Derek slide down the door, sit on the floor. Then, “Stiles? You okay?”

“Fine.” He says, wiping his mouth off and sighing.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I will, when you believe me.”

Stiles stands, washes his hands, and opens the door. Derek turns, and looks up at him. “I do believe you.”

He sits. Derek rotates, until they’re knee-to-knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “You’re a drama queen.”

Derek flicks his knee. “This is a serious conversation.”

“You’re seriously a drama queen.” Stiles smiles at Derek, the ghost of the grin that used to be semi-permanent.

Derek smiles back, and shakes his head. “Will you forgive me?”

Stiles contemplates. He speaks. “I think… I think I forgave you, long before that day in the grocery store. I think I knew, really, it wasn’t your fault.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry I punched you. I was mad.”

Derek shrugs. “I deserved it.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah. I’m sorry it felt good, then.”

Derek shrugs again. “That’s fine, too. I’ve done worse to you.”

A memory of a steering wheel shaped bruise flashes across his mind. He laughs. “Yeah.” He says.

Derek looks down, twiddles his thumbs for a second, before his eyes flick up to meet Stiles’s. “Do you think-?”

Stiles shrugs, understanding what he means. “Yeah. Sure.”

Derek nods. He leans forward, presses a gentle kiss to Stiles’s lips, and stands up.

The hole in Stiles’s heart shrinks, a little.

“I never stopped loving you, you know that, right?” Derek says, offering his hand to Stiles.

Stiles takes it, stands. “I don’t think I did either.” He says.

Derek kisses him once more, steps back. “Call me, tomorrow.”

Stiles nods.

Derek leaves.

Stiles lets him go.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow I don't know where this came from but here you go. I wrote it all in one sitting and did very little editing, so if you see any mistakes, please tell me. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> [my tumblr](http://goddammitdylanobrien.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [don't leave me (forever and always)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546086) by [madameofmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/pseuds/madameofmusic)




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